Transforming Cancer Classification: The Role of Advanced Gene Selection

Background/Objectives: Accurate classification in cancer research is vital for devising effective treatment strategies. Precise cancer classification depends significantly on selecting the most informative genes from high-dimensional datasets, a task made complex by the extensive data involved. This study introduces the Two-stage MI-PSA Gene Selection algorithm, a novel approach designed to enhance cancer classification accuracy through robust gene selection methods. Methods: The proposed method integrates Mutual Information (MI) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for gene selection. In the first stage, MI acts as an initial filter, identifying genes rich in cancer-related information. In the second stage, PSO refines this selection to pinpoint an optimal subset of genes for accurate classification. Results: The experimental findings reveal that the MI-PSA method achieves a best classification accuracy of 99.01% with a selected subset of 19 genes, substantially outperforming the MI and SVM methods, which attain best accuracies of 93.44% and 91.26%, respectively, for the same gene count. Furthermore, MI-PSA demonstrates superior performance in terms of average and worst-case accuracy, underscoring its robustness and reliability. Conclusions: The MI-PSA algorithm presents a powerful approach for identifying critical genes essential for precise cancer classification, advancing both our understanding and management of this complex disease.